Set up Claude Desktop

This guide shows you how to set up the Claude desktop app for third-party (3P) inference through Amazon Bedrock, so credentials and usage stay in your AWS account instead of an Anthropic consumer account.

You need to have requested access to an AWS account in order to use this tool, which means you will have needed to complete your state cybersecurity training.

Caution

Claude Desktop is not a supported tool or service, and while AWS itself is a procured platform, Claude Desktop is not a procured tool. Support for this tool by Tech Ops or other engineers is limited, and you may run into issues with this tool.

Access to this tool should be considered preliminary and under general guidelines for pilot tools and services: tentative approval for use of the tool may be removed at any time, and access may be conditional based on survey responses, cost approvals from your director or the finance team, and other factors.

If you would like to see Claude Desktop become a procured service, please speak with your director.

Fable 5 requires a ZDR exemption

Fable 5 and 5.1 are available on Bedrock for NJIA use under an Enterprise Frontier Safeguards (EFS) zero-data-retention exemption through December 31, 2026.

After that date, traffic is retained with automated safety monitoring (no human review). Re-confirm conformance with NJ AI guidelines before then.

Before you begin

Confirm:

• You know which AWS account will fund your work:
  • Innov-Dev for BizX
  • Innov-RES-Dev for ResX engineering
  • Innov-RES-Sandbox for ResX product, content, or design work
• You have a budget in mind for your AI spend on that account.

If you’re looking for the analogous CLI setups instead, see Configure Claude Code or Configure Codex.

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Step 1: Open a Platform Access ticket

Go to newjersey/internal-ops, scroll down to Platform Access, and click it to open a new ticket. In the ticket:

• Identify the AWS account that will support your work (see Before you begin).
• Give yourself a budget for AI spend.

Note

If you don’t already have access to the AWS account you named, you’ll be provisioned with access to it as part of this request.

Step 2: Install Homebrew and Claude Desktop

While your access request is pending, install Homebrew and Claude Desktop through its Homebrew cask:

brew install --cask claude

Step 3: Set up AWS SSO

Complete Set up AWS CLI with SSO to authenticate to AWS. Name your profile after the AWS account you selected in Step 1 (e.g. Innov-RES-Dev), per the profile-naming guidance in that guide.

Verify you can authenticate before continuing:

aws sts get-caller-identity --profile <your-profile>

Step 4: Install the managed configuration profile

Once your AWS access is provisioned, the Tech Ops team will share a .mobileconfig file (macOS) or .reg file (Windows) with you. This profile points Claude Desktop at Amazon Bedrock using the provider, endpoint, and credential values for your AWS account.

Tech Ops

The current .mobileconfig and .reg files are kept in this Google Drive folder. To generate new ones (e.g. for other AWS accounts, or with different model identifiers), follow Anthropic’s Installation and setup and Configuration reference docs.

Fable 5 will not appear in Claude Desktop until you’ve updated your managed profile with one that includes the Fable model identifiers.

Note

Installing and applying the profile, and general day-to-day use of Claude Desktop, is covered by Anthropic’s own documentation, not this guide. Start with Claude Desktop on 3P: Overview, then follow Installation and setup to apply the profile Tech Ops shared with you. See Sources below for more of Anthropic’s Claude 3P documentation.

Daily use

Each day you want to use Claude Desktop:

1. Open a terminal and re-authenticate: aws sso login --profile <your-profile>.
2. Open the Claude desktop app and confirm it can communicate with AWS (send a test message).

For AWS SSO issues (login failures, missing config values, expired sessions), see Set up AWS CLI with SSO: Troubleshooting.

Reporting usage

• Each day, report your Claude usage to a spreadsheet you keep for this purpose.
• Each month, share your total usage and your budget (set in Step 1) with the finance team.

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Sources

For installing and using Claude Desktop on 3P, see Anthropic’s documentation:

• Overview
• Installation and setup
• Configuration reference
• Telemetry and egress